Secure File Transfer:
Just like email has become a basic and ubiquitous building block of an enterprise's DNA, transferring (large) files securely has become a core business process in ways that nobody had envisioned just five years ago.
So, how do you send large files securely today?

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Attachment Limits: Myth or Reality? Not If You Use Accellion

Summary: Email attachment limit serves an important function in keeping the sanity of IT infrastructure. But, end users need to send large files to get the job done. How do you turn this reality into a myth by deploying Accellion?

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Ahhh, email! We love it. We hate it. We agonize over it. And, we can’t meaningfully function, figuratively and literally, without it. Ask any office worker, and he’ll tell you that email is undoubtedly one of his most important productivity solutions. It’s the means for him to collaborate with his colleagues to get his job done.

The popularity of email places a big burden on the email server and administrator. He needs to keep this vital application functioning well for all end users - no easy feat. In fact, it’s a rather challenging balancing act of trying to match available resources with user needs. This often means he has to impose unpopular size limits on how people can use email. (For example, Microsoft strongly urges administrators to set limits on mailbox, message and attachment sizes.)In the broader scheme of things, limits are a practical solution for an enterprise. However, to individual users, limits are, literally, quite limiting.

No doubt you’ve experienced it: It’s crunch time and you’re trying to send some critical files to meet a deadline. You attach them to an email message, hit send, and think the message has gone through. Some time later you get an administrative notification that says your message failed because the attachments were too large. Your business process just came to a screeching halt. You curse the IT department under your breath.

This is what happened to Sonus Networks on a big contract for a key customer as reported by ComputerWorld. And, this is the very problem that Accellion eliminates. We make email attachment limits irrelevant and turn them into capabilities instead. (And, yes, Sonus Networks is now a customer of Accellion.)

The Accellion secure file transfer solutionoffloads attachments from email messages into a parallel system. This vastly reduces the space needed for attachments, messages and the mailbox in your email server. It also improves email performance when large messages are no longer hogging the email infrastructure. Attachment limits can go from a paltry 5 MB in a typical email setting to a hefty 20 GB with Accellion.

Now see the glint of empowerment in the end users' eyes!

End users can go about their business and the IT people can look like heroes for setting the sky as the limit. And that poor overworked email IT administrator can finally get some sleep at night, knowing his email server won’t be crashing under the weight of overuse.